Now that I'm back, I'm doing my best to get T-shirt orders packed up for shipment on Monday. And since I've added ladies T's this time, I've got twice as many shirt stacks to deal with. To expedite matters, I've divided all the shirts by size and style into plastic Rubbermaid tubs and have them piled everywhere. Zombies on the dining table. Zombies on kitchen counters. Zombies on the couch. Zombies on the coffee table. Zombies, zombies, zombies.

And now I'm screwed because the post office stiffed me on the 300 shipping boxes I ordered... I got exactly half that number, which means I'm going to have to see if the local office has any in stock. Must be time for a break.

As I type this, I spy a really cute girl out my window.

Mid-30's with a nice smile and light brown hair that I'm imagining smells like a warm summer day (despite our overcast weather). And just as I am aglow with the thought that she will be moving into my apartment complex... be single... be sane... somehow find me irresistible... and want to be mine for the rest of my days... I realize she's just here visiting her grandmother or something, and some guy is waiting for her out in a car with the motor running.

Typical.

I wonder how many hateful comments and emails I'll get because I've just referred to a grown woman as a "girl". Knowing my luck, some raging feminist will make me the poster-boy for sexist pigs and will hold a bra-burning on the hood of my car.

Which would be kind of nice, actually, because the idea of passionate bra-less women calling for my death while setting my car on fire is kind of a turn-on.

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with referring to the fairer sex as "girls" (though my lack of ovaries will seriously under-mind such a position, I'm sure). Females start out as baby girls, grow into being little girls, then suddenly blossom into little ladies once puberty hits. After puberty they become young women before graduating into real, live actual women once they leave high school and childhood behind. At some point they may pick up a husband which makes them wives or have children which makes them mothers. Then time creeps steadily forward until women become old ladies at the sunset of their lives.

But all along, girls will be girls to me.

Which probably pisses off the ladies... at least until some guy refers to them as their "girl-friend" which is somehow appropriate at any age (and kind of understandable, because "lady-friend" sounds tawdry no matter how innocently you use it).

Maybe it's a single guy thing? Perhaps by referring to ladies/women/chicks/babes as "girls" it is only because we like to imagine the possibility that this "girl" will become "girlfriend"??

Comments

The women I have known who made an issue about “girls” usually had so many problems in relationships they weren’t worth knowing anyway. The women I have known who wouldn’t care about the word “girls” one bit were usually very strong personalities with whom it would take a whole hell of a lot more than a little word like that to get their hackles up.

I think the idea is not so much “girls” as much as it is treating grown-ups like children.

I don’t know if you have noticed – but it is a big NO NO to treat grown women like little children. It is, however, perfectly OK for women to treat grown men like little boys because… after all… we are and always will be.

Hence the social cunundrum of the ages; when we are children we want people to treat us as if we are older (“I’m nine AND A HALF”), when we get older we don’t want to be seen as TOO old, yet it is good to be young at heart, except we should act our age, unless treating someone like a child marginalizes them, not to mention that we should all try to be childLIKE and not childISH.

Wouah ! Tu es trop mignon… To dream about a girl whom you saw out your window. How is this possible that you would be still single ? You’re funny ! You’re romantic ! You have “talent” ! For a french girl (I don’t make the difference “girl/woman”, me either) that I am, it is a mystery…

Eh, call a girl a girl. I call boys of all ages boys… So far, no men have staged bra-burnings on the hood of my car. Which is kind of a relief. Because you figure if a boy is wearing a bra, he probably needs to be, for one reason or another.

I’m totally comfortable with being called a girl. I use the term freely, and likewise use the term “boy” whenever I feel like it. Back in the raging feminist days, I’d sometimes get flak for calling females “girls,” but it’s been awhile since anyone objected.

When I call Bret “boy,” he rattles this off in an exaggerated redneck drawl: “Boy? Who you callin’ ‘boy’? I got 12″ of pecker, 29 lbs. of balls, and enough hair on my ass to start a forest fire! I ain’t no ‘boy’!”

There are far worse things to be called than a girl. When referring to my friends, I may say something like “the girls and I”. So you can call me a girl anytime, and I promise I won’t burn any bras on your car – damn things are too expensive to burn over a name anyway!

i’d take girl over ma’am ANY day. the only time i don’t like the term girl is when it is used like this: “you throw like a girl” or “you hit like a girl” (when trying to put down a guy). other than that, girl is a-ok with me (and i am a feminist- fancy that!)

I’m with Ms. Sizzle. The guy at the pharmacy called me “Miss” the other day, and I was all giggles all the way to the car. There’s something about breaking the plane of 30 that makes people want to call you “ma’am,” and I don’t like it one bit. I have a notion that your cute 30-something would have been flattered to know that you thought of her as a girl!

Dave … this is sort of unrelated to this entry, but something odd caught the corner of my eye. Maybe it’s just me, but the typeface used for Dave’s Flickr Gallery hit me in a way that suggested it might be something even more interesting than photos of your travels.

I don’t care about the girl thing either, and I am one of those feminist non-bra wearing types… A girl is a reference for a female, just at boy is a reference for a male. And I use boy all the time, ie. I used to date this boy, I work with this boy… but I think 50 is about the age that I stop using this to describe people male or female. There is no way that I can justify calling someone my mom’s age a girl.

So go ahead, call a girl a girl. Do you mind being referred to as a boy?

Here’s the deal with girl: when I am in a meeting with a CIO or CEO or CFO (and I am more often than I want to think about), as soon as a ‘man’ calls me girl, I am seen as a girl on some level, with the inteligence of a girl. It undermines my thoughts, opinions, beliefs, theories, etc… in that situation. I then have to spend time on damage control of being called a girl (which means I act stoic, use data, logic and fact to get my point across, which I just spent some amount of time doing. Out of that situation I could care less (especially when a cute guy looks out his window and hopefully swoons about me).

Eh – I call all the women I work with girls, and many are in thei 30s and 40s. Young lady – that ticks me off, because that’s what my grandmother called me when she was angry with me. But girl? Not a problem.

I’m sure the last thing you want on your blog is gynecologist talk.. heh.

….BUT, my gyn refers to his patients as girls. I *love* that about him. I call all my gal pals girls (and I’m in my 40’s). I had a slumber party last night and the last thing they heard from me was, “good night girls”.

I’ve taken to calling only my pre-teen niece and her friends “ma’am” — I find it disarms them.

The older I get, the more I want to still be referred to as “girl.” Like you said, we spend the first two decades of our lives being “girls” it’s really a hard thing to get out of. I’ll probably be a “girl” til I’m in the nursing.

I call other girls “chicks” at times, but obviously it doesn’t have the same connotation it would if a man said it.

For me, “Lady” is reserved for chicks that piss me off, like “This f**king lady cut me off in line” or “This f**king stupid ass lady at work is such a moron.” Men typically use “ladies” when trying to be suave: “How are you lovely ladies enjoying your evening?”

I think “girl” is appropriate for a cute chick out on the street as long as you’re not being a pig. And stay away from the B, C, and T words — those are always a no-no.

I’m very okay with being called a ‘girl’. The ones who make a stink about it are the same ones who become offended when a guy holds a door open for them and, personally, I think those ‘girls’ need a swift kick in the teeth… 😉

I don’t care if you call me a “girl.” I think I’d actually feel weird hearing someone refer to me as a “lady” or a “woman” (although I’m in my mid-twenties and should come to terms with the fact that means I’m an adult). I call men “guys” for the most part and refer to women as “chicks.”

In my former life I worked in academia and one comes across some dead serious types there (as well as some wicked funny ones). There was one woman–and I do mean woman as there was nothing girlish about her–who insisted on referring to our students as “women.” They were, mind you, between 18 and 22. It always made me laugh because I just can’t think of males that age as “men.” She was adamant that every female became a woman at, ahem, puberty.

Consistency would demand that those 8th grade guys I remember would be referred to as men. Too funny!

Part of the problem, it seems, is that the English language gives us no completely symmetric female equivalent for “guys”. For us, “guy” can apply to young fellas and old dudes alike. It’s informal and all-purpose — no hidden meaning or tinge of disrespect. I suppose “ladies” is close to the same, but it also has to share meanings with its more formal cousin — the counterpart to “gentlemen”. It’s too bad that “girls” has been tainted with an age association, because that would have seemed like a good candidate. Correct me if I’m wrong here, but the phrase “night out with the girls” seems like a good match for “night out with the guys”. I guess the problem occurs when “girls” is used in a context that requires more formality or age appropriateness. Does it seem like guys just don’t care as much about those distinctions applied to themselves?

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